Leadership seminars by themselves are not a bad thing.
There are plenty of legitimate ones, especially ones that are more directed at the business world than people's personal lives.
However, from what I can gather from Choice Center, they are running a really expensive "Large Group Awareness Training" course, in two parts -- "Discovery" and "Breakthrough". The first two parts don't appear to be particularly cult-like, and seem to be mostly encouraging psychobabble to supposedly make people discover things about themselves and change their lives.
The scam/cult aspect seems to be the third part -- "Leadership Legacy". Even Nick Binger, a proud graduate of Choice Center, was skeptical about this part. Basically, a certain percentage of the Discovery/Breakthrough "graduates" move on to the "Leadership Legacy" course. This course extends over 3 months, and puts high pressure on its participants to recruit friends and family.
I think I understand what they're doing here.
They are providing an overpriced "self-improvement" course to suckers in the first two parts. Knowing that only some will walk away feeling like it changed their lives, these initial courses are the "weeders" to see which people are really willing to cheerlead for Choice Center for the long haul. Those who are iffy about the whole thing are likely to drop out at this point. The more enthusiastic graduates move on to "Leadership Legacy", where it is assumed that they are already drunk on Choice Center kool-aid, and are therefore easy to use to recruit others at that point.
This is actually a common scam tactic -- testing potential victims for susceptibility before investing time and effort into conning them. Even Nigerian scammers do this. When you get those Nigerian e-mails asking for your banking info, you might think they're looking to steal directly out of your account, but that's not what they're doing. They are trying to identify the suckers dumb enough to provide that information, figuring they will be easy marks.
Choice Center is likely not directly scamming anyone, but rather convincing depressed, lonely, and downtrodden people that their lives have been changed by the program, and then in turn use these people as free recruiters. They especially love public figures such as Negreanu and Esfandiari, as their recruitment carries a lot more weight than the average unknown Joe.
What about the charity aspect? That is probably legitimate, but it's attached exactly for that reason -- to provide legitimacy. This way Choice Center has an immediate answer when their motive are questioned: "Look at all the money we raised for charity!"
Anyone who thinks that Choice Center isn't complete garbage just needs to look at the "Leadership Legacy" segment, where members are pressed to recruit. Legitimate leadership seminars do not behave in such a fashion.